Casirate d'Adda

Treviglio wanted a toll for the water. The canal that irrigated the fields of Casirate ran under its control, and the larger town took advantage of it; so Casirate, joining forces with Calvenzano and Vailate, asked the Visconti for permission to dig one of its own. It got it, and the Roggia Vailata was born, drawing water straight from the Adda and still in use today. It is the way small villages settled their business with big ones for centuries: not by arguing, but by digging.

Three thousand eight hundred and ninety-four inhabitants in the province of Bergamo, on the left bank of the Adda. The earliest document is from 774, the will of a Lombard named Taido who left property to the church of Santa Maria in loco Caseriate; the name is said to come from casèra, the place where cheese is made and matured, and indeed there was a great deal of pasture here. In Palazzo Paladini was born Enrichetta Blondel, the first wife of Alessandro Manzoni. In 1974 ENI, probing the subsoil, found an oil deposit within the municipal territory: the analyses showed the crude was too little to be worth it.